11 Things Students Should Include In Their College Application Essay

11 Things Students Should Include In Their College Application Essay Maybe you jump around, writing a little bit here and a little there. It's okay to have sections you know won't work or to skip over things you think you'll need to include later. The key to writing your first draft is not to worry about whether it's any goodâ€"just get something on paper and go from there. Your essay should ultimately have a very narrow focus. 650 words may seem like a lot, but you can fill it up very quickly. You will have to rewrite, so trying to get everything perfect is both frustrating and futile. Open with the part of her story where she finally gave up after calling the theater and city hall a dozen times. Now you have a list of potential topics, but probably no idea where to start. The next step is to go through your ideas and determine which one will make for the strongest essay. Still, don't worry that every single detail has to be perfectly correct. Definitely don't make anything up, but if you remember a wall as green and it was really blue, your readers won't notice or care. Of course, concentrating on an anecdote isn't the only way to narrow your focus. Depending on your topic, it might make more sense to build your essay around an especially meaningful object, relationship, or idea. Let's go through the key steps that will help you turn a great topic into a great essay. You've decided on a topic, but now you need to turn that topic into an essay. To do so, you need to determine what specifically you're focusing on and how you'll structure your essay. Your essay has to be built step-by-step, just like this building. If you're going to structure your essay around a single theme or object, you need to begin the essay by introducing that key thing. You can do so with a relevant anecdote or a detailed description. The key to this type of structure is to create narrative tensionâ€"you want your reader to be wondering what happens next. This means you either need to have a very specific topic from the beginning or find a specific aspect of a broader topic to focus on. As you go through your ideas, be discriminatingâ€"really think about how each topic could work as an essay. But don't be too hard on yourself; even if an idea may not work exactly the way you first thought, there may be another way to approach it. Pay attention to what you're really excited about and look for ways to make those ideas work. Now that you've got the reader's attention, go back and explain anything they need to know about how you got into this situation. Don't feel compelled to fit everything inâ€"only include the background details that are necessary to either understand what happened or illuminate your feelings about the situation in some way. When deciding what part of your topic to focus on, try to find whatever it is about the topic that is most meaningful and unique to you. Once you've figured that part out, it will guide how you structure the essay. If you just don't have an idea you're happy with, that's okay! Sometimes you'll end up having a genius idea in the car on the way to school or while studying for your U.S. history test. Otherwise, try the brainstorming process again when you've had a break.